Western culture is superior

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Two recent news stories illustrate one of the unmentionables of
modern life  namely, that Western culture is superior to others. As the
United States is now engaged in a protracted and expensive effort to remake
the Middle East, we ought to be clear about what we are doing and why.

First, the stories. One concerns the problem of rape in Iraq.
The New York Times reported the fate of a 9-year-old Iraqi girl who had been
grabbed by a stranger and raped. Awful enough. But perhaps worse than the
rape itself was the response of her family.

Like many pre-modern societies, Iraqis live by a shame-honor
system. "For a woman's family, all this is worse than death," Dr. Khulud
Younis, an Iraqi gynecologist, told the Times. "They will face shame. If a
woman (rape victim) has a sister, her future will be gone."

If a woman is brave enough to report a rape to Iraqi
authorities, she will be treated with indifference. She must first go to the
police who issue the paperwork for forensic examinations. In Baghdad, the
only clinic that can perform a forensic exam is located at the city morgue,
and it is open only from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. If the rape occurs after
business hours, the woman or child will have to return the next day (being
careful not to wash away the evidence in the meantime).

The overwhelming majority of victims do not even attempt to file
a complaint. Tribal law prescribes that victims of rape be killed by their
male relatives, and when this happens, the men are often given extremely
light sentences or no punishment by the courts. In the case of the
9-year-old, her life was spared, but her four brothers as well as her mother
and father beat her daily for having compromised the family's honor.

The other story concerns young girls in Africa. Just outside
Kampala, Uganda, a 16-year-old orphan named Lillian attempts to hold on to
her virginity. Both of her parents, reports The New York Times, succumbed to
AIDS. She was given into the care of an uncle. But he, too, died of AIDS.

Lillian is keen to delay sex and dreams of going to college. But
while the Ugandan government officially encourages abstinence, the
culture  as well as the economy  push the other way. Young girls often
drop out of school to become the second or third wives of an older man. Many
others adopt a form of prostitution. Lillian's cousins (to whom she is
something of a burden) are pressuring her to get a "sponsor."

Lillian explains: "I know what they mean. They want me to do
what so many girls do and get a sugar daddy. You give him what he wants, and
he gives you what you want." Another girl puts it this way: "Some of us are
orphans. We are barely getting by. If someone comes along and says he'll buy
you soap, you might try it. He gives you 1,000 shillings (about 50 cents),
and you hope next time he'll give you 2,000."

To say that Western culture is superior is not to say that any
particular person living in the West is superior to any person living
elsewhere. That would be ridiculous. But it is equally ridiculous to deny
that the moral standards, customs and beliefs of the West contribute to
fairer and far more humane societies than are found elsewhere.

We are now engaged in a mission to remake the Middle East  to
introduce democracy, the rule of law and religious pluralism. But as we
undertake this task, which would be extremely difficult under the best of
circumstances, we are hampered by the fact that a sizeable minority of our
own people does not believe at all that our way is better. They, in fact,
regard the very suggestion as obscene. Any shortcomings of more primitive
societies, when they are acknowledged at all, are blamed on others, usually
on us.

Feminists who are quick to file lawsuits for even the smallest
slight in this country are strangely reluctant to make common cause with
women in nations like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Why? Is it because
championing those women would imply that Western society  which feminists
have so long derided as sexist  is far better than any others when it
comes to the treatment of women?

Is it really arrogance, as the liberals would have it, to
believe that the system and the culture we've inherited is superior to
others? Or is it ingratitude to deny it?

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